#Business of Cosmetic surgery is going fine. In 2017, people are projected to spend 10 billion dollars on face and body upgrades

Demand for cosmetic surgery is showing no sign of abating, with a boom in Asia as the procedures become more affordable and less of a taboo, experts said.

The global market grew by 8.3 percent in 2016 to an estimated value of $8.9 billion the GDP of the Bahamas, according to data released Friday at the IMCAS aesthetic industry conference in Paris.

In 2017, people are projected to spend 10 billion dollars on face and body upgrades, growing to nearly 12 billion dollars in 2020.

"There's a general acceptance that doing, whether it's surgery or less invasive procedures... to make you feel better, look better, it's much more accepted," Nolan Karp, a New York surgeon and board member of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, told AFP.

Demand in Asia is exploding, practitioners say, driven by a rapidly growing middle class and a quest for more Caucasian features.

Behind the United States and Brazil, South Korea was the third biggest market for aesthetic treatments in 2015, with 1.2 million procedures out of a global total of 21.7 million, according to data from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS).

While breast augmentation and liposuction are the most popular procedures in America, Brazil, Mexico and most of Europe, demand in South Korea is for eye, nose, cheek and chin resculpting.

"They (clients) will be treating areas of the face that will make them look like Europeans or Americans," Laurent Brones, and industry expert, told AFP.

IMCAS data shows the Asia Pacific region will be the fastest grower, at 12 percent in the coming four years -- overtaking Europe for the first time in 2020 to represent a quarter of the global market at over three billion euros.